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Advancing Myanmar junta column executes four civilian hostages in Sagaing Region

The bodies of five slain men—four civilians and one guerrilla fighter—were found by members of the resistance following a three-day rampage through multiple Sagaing Region villages by a 100-soldier military column this week.

The targeted villages were located around the area where Sagaing, Wetlet and Ayadaw townships meet, with junta assaults beginning on June 18 when the column raided Thazi Lay village in Sagaing at 5am.

The Sagaing District People’s Defence Force (PDF) responded by attacking the military unit in question in four locations, according to the commander of the resistance group’s Battalion 1.

A member of the village’s defence team was killed when he went back to Thazi Lay and was ambushed by junta scouts who had stayed behind.

“We couldn’t retrieve his body,” the PDF battalion commander said, identifying the man as 21-year-old Shine Ko Ko, a native of Thazi Lay. His burnt remains were discovered the following day, after the junta forces had left.

The 100-soldier column joined another army unit based in the village of Shwe See Khon, also in Sagaing Township, and captured two villagers—one of whom they murdered immediately.

“They killed one of them and dropped the body in a well,” said a member of the Shwebo District PDF’s Battalion 1 who retrieved the body, adding that the man had a gunshot wound to the head.

The troops took the surviving hostage to Kyauk Kone in neighbouring Wetlet Township, where they detained two other local men during a raid. Both they and the man taken from Shwe See Khon were killed near a pagoda at the eastern edge of Kyauk Kone on Monday evening. Their bodies were found the next day, according to the PDF member.

“All three of them had gunshot wounds to their legs,” he told Myanmar Now. “There were also knife wounds all over their bodies and their hands were tied. Decomposition had already set in and the ropes used to tie them were loose when we found them.”

Upon examining the injuries, he speculated that the soldiers had told the hostages to run and shot them from behind as they attempted to flee.

The men, whose names were not confirmed at the time of reporting, were in their 40s and 50s and had reportedly already been displaced by previous junta offensives.

The military has been systematically raiding and torching villages in western Wetlet Township throughout June. The regime has not released any information on its forces’ activities in the area.

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